INDIANAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 Michigan\u2019s Roddy Gayle Jr. snagged a final rebound, then flung the ball to the other end of the court, effectively ending UConn\u2019s frantic bid for a miracle.<\/p>\n
The horn sounded, and Morez Johnson Jr. came over to share a celebratory scream and hearty hug \u2014 from one transfer to another \u2014 as the Wolverines began running toward midcourt to celebrate a national championship.<\/a><\/p>\n Maybe a school really can build an ideal college basketball roster amid the topsy-turvy chaos of the transfer portal, paying players and top-to-bottom overhauls.<\/p>\n Michigan proved it Monday night, rolling out an all-transfer starting lineup that was too big, too strong and too capable of countering anything that UConn could muster \u2014 even on a night when the 3-point shot wasn\u2019t falling and All-American Yaxel Lendeborg was hobbled by ankle and knee injuries.<\/p>\n The Wolverines still had enough to hold off the Huskies 69-63 and claim the program\u2019s first title in 37 years.<\/p>\n And they showed how second-year Dusty May assembled a resilient roster by diving all the way into the portal.<\/p>\n \u201cMan, this whole year, we were a team that played together,\u201d Lendeborg said as he stood amid the confetti on the court at Lucas Oil Stadium. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a best player, like I said before. We have a guy that steps up big-time in these games.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have players that make plays when they need to make them. And we just played a full all-around team basketball game today. We did it.\u201d<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t matter that the Wolverines shot just 38% while making 2 of 15 3-pointers \u2014 stunning numbers for a team that entered the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 8 nationally in KenPom\u2019s adjusted offensive efficiency (126.6 points per 100 possessions).<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t matter that they were outrebounded \u2014 and gave up an incredible 22 offensive boards.<\/p>\n Nor that Lendeborg carried an awkward gait as he grinded his way through a 4-for-13 shooting effort in 36 minutes after twisting his left ankle and spraining a knee ligament<\/a> in Saturday\u2019s win over Arizona in the Final Four.<\/p>\n Not the way these guys complemented each other on the sport\u2019s biggest stage.<\/p>\n Point guard Elliot Cadeau, in his first season after two up-and-down years at North Carolina, had 19 points and was named the Final Four\u2019s most outstanding player. Johnson, in his first year from Illinois, had 12 points and 10 rebounds. The 7-foot-3 Aday Mara, in his first year from UCLA, helped hold UConn big man Tarris Reed Jr. \u2014 who had been a March Madness<\/a> force \u2014 to just 4-of-12 shooting.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody cared about stats the whole season. Nobody cared about nothing but winning,\u201d Cadeau said.<\/p>\n Four of Michigan\u2019s five starters were in their first year after transferring: Cadeau, Johnson, Mara and Lendeborg (UAB).<\/p>\n The fifth starter, Nimari Burnett, was practically a Michigan lifer by comparison; he was in his third season with the Wolverines, after starting his career at Texas Tech then spending two years at Alabama. A similar story followed Gayle, a reserve who had spent two years at rival Ohio State before these last two years in Ann Arbor.<\/p>\n That left only two players in Michigan\u2019s eight-man rotation who would qualify as \u201chomegrown\u201d talent: freshman Trey McKenney and fifth-year graduate Will Tschetter.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an approach that tailored to the current era of the sport, with players transferring freely between campuses and cleared to profit from the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL), along with schools able to pay athletes directly with the arrival of revenue sharing. <\/p>\n Purists have complained that the revolving door of players makes it harder for fans to get behind their schools than it was when most players spent multiple seasons in the same uniform. Transfers even featured prominently in an executive order signed last week by President Donald Trump<\/a> seeking to reform college sports.<\/p>\n May shrugged off the critics on Sunday, noting, \u201cI think we are all better in certain situations than others.\u201d<\/p>\n Athletic director Warde Manuel offered a similar defense on the court Monday night after the program claimed its first national title since the Glen Rice-led Wolverines cut down the nets in Seattle in 1989.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of teams around the country benefited from transfers,\u201d Manuel said. \u201cYou can\u2019t just say, \u2018Well, Michigan had the most transfers.\u2019 Dusty put this team together the way he did.\u201d<\/p>\n And it worked to perfection.<\/p>\n By the end, Mara was jumping around with a few teammates after they had watched the \u201cOne Shining Moment\u201d music montage of tournament highlights, with someone picking up a handful of confetti and tossing it into the air to flutter around them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to get the right people on the bus,\u201d assistant coach Justin Joyner said. \u201cIt\u2019s important to get unselfish guys that are about winning, that are about the group. We had that with the best of our players. Yaxel Lendeborg\u2019s one of the most unselfish superstars you\u2019ll ever be around. <\/p>\n \u201cSo when you have that from the top, it permeates through your locker room, it permeates through your group. And eventually you can become a unit that\u2019s about winning.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n This story corrects a typo in McKenney\u2019s last name.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP March Madness bracket: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ncaa-mens-bracket<\/a> and coverage: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 Michigan\u2019s Roddy Gayle Jr. snagged a final rebound, then flung the ball to the other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,325,2340,2329,2322,8761,588,113,88277,55358,354,584,1739,1043,27422,231,772,20001,55359,1544,66,54255,15011,3549],"class_list":{"0":"post-704886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-college-sports","11":"tag-connecticut","12":"tag-ct-state-wire","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-elliot-cadeau","15":"tag-in-state-wire","16":"tag-indiana","17":"tag-justin-joyner","18":"tag-march-madness-ncaa-tournament","19":"tag-mens-college-basketball","20":"tag-mi-state-wire","21":"tag-michigan","22":"tag-michigan-wolverines","23":"tag-michigan-wolverines-mens-basketball","24":"tag-ncaa","25":"tag-ncaa-basketball","26":"tag-ncaa-mens-division-i-basketball-championship","27":"tag-ncaa-mens-bracket","28":"tag-ncaab","29":"tag-sports","30":"tag-tarris-reed","31":"tag-will-tschetter","32":"tag-yaxel-lendeborg"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116368166267192164","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}